Sheila Armstrong grew up in the west of Ireland and is now based in Dublin. She was nominated for a Hennessy Award, first runner up in the Moth Short Story Prize, and longlisted for the Short Story of the Year at the Irish Book Awards. Her stories appear in Young Irelanders (New Island), gorse and in Best European Fiction 2019 (Dalkey Archive).

Paul Baggaley at Bloomsbury acquired her short story collection, How to Gut a Fish, in auction along with her debut novel the fallen animal collective scheme.

‘I tend to pick through the imagery of the world around me like a magpie. Each of the stories in my first collection began as a chance encounter, a glimpse at a photo, or a snatch of conversation. Hopefully you find some silver amongst the foil.

‘When I first began writing, I found it difficult – I couldn’t easily come up with page-turning plots or snappy dialogue. But I always had a knack for thinking about things from a slightly skewed angle, so when I took a course in experimental literature, I found a way of working with words that felt a little bit different, but also right – rich, dream-like and a little bit fractured.

I am interested in everything from physics and technology to nature and landscapes. I write about communities, both rural and urban, invisible boundaries and transgressive experiences – moments of transcendence that make you stop and really see. When I write, I’m trying to get at these experiences by examining exactly what’s there, both in the foreground and background.

How to Gut a Fish, was published on 17th February 2022.

Praise for How to Gut A Fish

“Poised, distinctive and excellent”

The Irish Times

“Assured … impressive … Armstrong has a talent for disrupting our expectations and her prose is sensorily rich … Her evocations of landscape are extraordinary”

Observer

“Armstrong’s stories are rich with description, sight and sounds, textures and scents. The details come quickly, compressed, in close succession; the writing is forever being infused by sensations, both strange and new … Disquieting material, equanimous prose; in combining the two, Armstrong’s stories have a sinister finesse”

Sunday Telegraph

“A triumph, then. A book entirely of and for the moment, possessed of the courage to document the horrors of a world unravelling and the wit to enhance its unflinching worldview with a wry dose of humanity. The stories in How to Gut a Fish, bolstered by Armstrong’s rangy and elegant prose, vibrate with a potent energy. We will be lucky indeed if we see a finer debut collection this year”

https://lunate.co.uk/reviews/how-to-gut-a-fish-by-sheila-amstrong

“Unsettling, unpredictable, and brilliant”

Roddy Doyle

“This exquisitely wrought collection made me feel as if I were inhabiting another realm: sensuous, tactile, beautiful and disturbing. Sheila Armstrong's hypnotic prose has a haunting, lingering, dreamlike effect”

Lisa Harding, author of Bright Burning Things

“Armstrong’s short stories make tremendously good company, each one transported me to a place I’d never been before. Dark, devilishly well written and full of atmosphere, How to Gut a Fish is one of the most original and affecting short story collections I’ve read in years”

Jan Carson, Author Of The Fire Starters

“Do you know when you read a sentence that is so good, it does weird things to your insides? You kind of shudder with satisfaction and hope for more. Well, I am addicted to good sentences, and Sheila Armstrong is my dealer. The stories in How to Gut a Fish are gorgeously weird, inspiring curiosity both on and off the page. If you’re anything like me, they will send you into a fit of ferocious googling: What is star jelly? How old is the moon? The story titles are works of art in themselves. This is the good stuff. Hook it to my veins”

Louise Nealon, author of Snowflake

“I loved it. I found the stories completely hypnotic and strange. (Armstrong) has a meditative and mesmerising voice, and her description of everyday life is perceptive and profound”

Megan Bradbury, author of Everyone is Watching

“In sumptuous and evocative prose, Sheila Armstrong writes stories that are unnerving and unsettling. Stories which make you go, wait, wait, what was that?”

Claire Fuller, author of Unsettled Ground

“It's not often I open a book to find prose this exciting, original and frankly envy-inducing. Line by line, these stories set a series of small fires in my head, and they're still burning”

Zoe Gilbert, author of Folk

“I loved it. I found the stories completely hypnotic and strange. (Armstrong) has a meditative and mesmerising voice, and her description of everyday life is perceptive and profound”

Megan Bradbury, author of Everyone is Watching

“Armstrong is a writer who must be noticed and read ... There are remarkable moments of clarity and beauty, making this an impressive and must-read debut. It is, most notably, the brilliant and disconcerting Red Market - an exceptional and unforgettable story that will forge How to Gut a Fish as a superb debut collection”

The Word Factory

Rights Sold

Bloomsbury (World)